Alfie - 13 year old Dad

[be-bop]

I don't understand how kids get pregnant these days??
you can't go into a music store or supermarket without falling over displays of condoms,you can get the morning after pill without doctors presciption in any chemist store.
They get taught sex education from a very early age so it's not that they don't know how babies get there..
Strange days

Originally Posted by be-bop

I don't understand how kids get pregnant these days??
you can't go into a music store or supermarket without falling over displays of condoms,you can get the morning after pill without doctors presciption in any chemist store.
They get taught sex education from a very early age so it's not that they don't know how babies get there..
Strange days

No morning after pill w/o a Rx if you are a minor (under 18) in the US.

And the more extreme social conservative movement in the US prefer their 8 point plan for abstinence only education, including baseless scare tactics:

sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects

bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child's parents, and society

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Pie

Think he meant "Rs" = "Republicans"

Originally Posted by classicman

read the link Bruce. It was the author I was referring to not her. I then made the ASSUMPTION that Pie was lumping all R's in with evangelicals.

Originally Posted by classicman

Oh and R's does equal republicans too -

That's what I thought, but didn't want to say anything based on an assumption.

The author of the article (Talbot) is making comparisons Republican/Democrat, red state/blue state and attributing liberal/conservative with a broad brush.

That said, The "social scientists and family-law scholars" that are actually providing the data and conclusions the author quotes, like the one Pie put in her post, are not concerned with politics but religion, values, and actions of the teens. I think their conclusions sound quite reasonable.

[Tulip]

Originally Posted by be-bop

I don't understand how kids get pregnant these days??
you can't go into a music store or supermarket without falling over displays of condoms,you can get the morning after pill without doctors presciption in any chemist store.
They get taught sex education from a very early age so it's not that they don't know how babies get there..
Strange days

I have a friend who's in dental school. Scored high in his DAT, high grades in his undergrad classes, so yeah, he thinks and claims that he's smart. He was living with his gf (now ex) who got pregnant. I later found out she aborted. I asked him why and he gave me several reasons. The bottom line, they didn't want the baby. The conversation dragged on a bit because I was really against abortion. Anyways, finally I wondered out loud, "Weren't you using protection?!?" He said no because they didn't think she'd get pregnant. Hmm.......

[TheMercenary]

Right on.

[DanaC]

This is such a non-story. Sundae's right, it's his baby face that's brought the tabloids in.

My part of England (my borough) has one of the highest teenage conception rates in the country. We've also brought those figures down at a faster rate than anywhere else, because it's something the local authority and partners (health trust, police, anti-social behaviour units, neighbourhood management, CYP Directorate) have concentrated a hell of a lot of effort, time and resources into: reaching at-risk youngsters, outreach education programmes in schools in the area etc.

Why does my area have such high levels of teen conception? It's nothing to do with permissiveness, and a lot to do with the kind of social breakdown that goes hand in hand with poverty and economic distress. Much of my borough is no different to the rest of the country; but we have two areas within it that rank in the top ten on the multiple deprivation index: which means we have two of the most deprived areas in England. No prizes for guessing which parts of my borough are contributing most to those figures. The life expectancy of children born in those two parts of the borough is ten years lower than children born in my village. That is not a slipping of conservative values, it's poverty plain and simple. It never went away.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Why does being poor increase teenage (& preteen) conception rates?
They have nothing else to play with?
Despair/seeking solace in sex?
Poor = poor parenting?
laissez faire attitude about life results in poor and poor parenting?

[glatt]

The parents probably had kids when they were too young, which is why the parents (and thus their kids) are poor. Parents who had kids at a young age probably create an environment where it is likely that their kids will have kids at a young age.

And it will happen again with the next generation. That little baby will also be having kids as a teen.

[Pie]

"Rich, liberal-elite" kids don't have nearly as high a pregnancy rate as "rich conservatives" -- mostly on the basis of information, goals and role-models. And it goes beyond teens.

In Regnerus's survey, the teen-agers who espouse this new morality are tolerant of premarital sex (and of contraception and abortion) but are themselves cautious about pursuing it. Regnerus writes, "They are interested in remaining free from the burden of teenage pregnancy and the sorrows and embarrassments of sexually transmitted diseases. They perceive a bright future for themselves, one with college, advanced degrees, a career, and a family. Simply put, too much seems at stake. Sexual intercourse is not worth the risks." These are the kids who tend to score high on measures of "strategic orientation"--how analytical, methodical, and fact-seeking they are when making decisions. Because these teen-agers see abstinence as unrealistic, they are not opposed in principle to sex before marriage--just careful about it. Accordingly, they might delay intercourse in favor of oral sex, not because they cherish the idea of remaining "technical virgins" but because they assess it as a safer option. "Solidly middle- or upper-middle-class adolescents have considerable socioeconomic and educational expectations, courtesy of their parents and their communities' lifestyles," Regnerus writes. "They are happy with their direction, generally not rebellious, tend to get along with their parents, and have few moral qualms about expressing their nascent sexuality." They might have loved Ellen Page in "Juno," but in real life they'd see having a baby at the wrong time as a tragic derailment of their life plans. For this group, Regnerus says, unprotected sex has become "a moral issue like smoking or driving a car without a seatbelt. It's not just unwise anymore; it's wrong."

(From here.)

Here's the problem:
Lack of realistic, attainable goals.
Lack of role-models.
Lack of accurate information.
Lack of affordable, easily available contraception.

[Sundae]

As this is a UK-specific post, at least in terms of the OT, you can take the last item off the list.
Possibly the last two - I had sex education from the age of 11 at my Catholic school. Including information regarding contraception. And every year after that at my grammar school!
And contraception in all forms is available free here, certainly for teenagers. You can even pick up handfuls of free condoms at the local family planning centre.

Add to the list - probably already covered generally - is the lack of parental assumption that teen pregnancy is a bad thing. My schoolfriends and I would have been mortified if we fell pregnant in our teens. Absolutely curl up and want to die and hide our faces forever more. It's not a sensible reaction (and not one that girls at the extremes of the social scale would have) but it was what we learned from our parents. So, yes - the fear of the shame was a huge motivator in ensuring we used contraception, or even abstained from sex altogether. It was like being fat, and having a tattoo saying "stupid" across your forehead. And having to wear gross clothes too! And that going on for none months and then maybe even forever!

Poor girls - poorer than me I mean, and I've explained before I'm from a council estate - and rich girls lived without this shame. The poor because their Mums had them at 17 anyway, and their sisters got pregnant at 15 and got their own flats from the Council. The rich because indulgent parents sorted things out one way or another, and the girls still ended up at University or working for Daddy's friend. Gross generalisation, but this was how it seemed at the time. And yes, I knew girls from different social strata who got "in the family way".

Us in the middle? Our Mums would have skinned us and got our sisters to wear the skin as a warning that we should never ruin our lives in that way.

Hmmm. Maybe that's why I didn't want children?!

[classicman]

Related to Evangelicals - C'mon Pie - Thats the broadest of all brushes. Sheesh. Do you really think ALL R's are Evangelicals or worse?

"Why Do So Many Evangelical Teenagers Become Pregnant?"
By Margaret Talbot
(Areas of Expertise: Civil Liberties, Elections & Political Parties, Family & Children, Feminism)
New America Foundation The New Yorker

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by classicman

Related to Evangelicals - C'mon Pie - Thats the broadest of all brushes. Sheesh. Do you really think ALL R's are Evangelicals or worse?

Her post stated;

"Rich, liberal-elite" kids don't have nearly as high a pregnancy rate as "rich conservatives"

Where does she say all rich people are evangelicals?

[Pie]

No, just the stupid ones.

[DanaC]

The poverty factor mainly relates to a greater level of social breakdown, higher levels of drug and alcohol use, higher levels of unemployment, low-paid, unskilled employment, and (in the case of the areas I was talking about) a culture of low expectations and social dislocation.

I say cultural, because these factors have coalesced into a kind of cultural identity. It's generational.

[glatt]

But does the poverty cause the social attitudes, or do the attitudes cause the poverty?